More than a year after first launching 5G services in October 2019, Zain Saudi Arabia is now attempting to grab a share of the domestic and corporate broadband access market with the rollout of 5G-based fixed wireless access (FWA) services.
The Saudi operator has again turned to Nokia for support and will deploy 60,000 of the Finnish vendor s Fastmile 5G FWA gateways over the next 12 months. The gateways also incorporate embedded SIM (eSIM) cards and support Wi-Fi 6.
Zain Saudi Arabia has been collaborating with Nokia on 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) since at least 2017, and in June 2019 the two partners agreed a three-year contract for the supply of 5G radio access network (RAN), backhaul, security and other services.
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WHEN we were young, our parents and grandparents used to implore us by using the phrase – “Pardon, O Sheikh”. To our young understanding, addressing someone with the word “Sheikh” meant that a person is polite, righteous, obedient to his elders, and respectful to his siblings.
In this regard, I comfortably relate to the late Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad, who embodied and represented the title ‘Sheikh’ to the fullest.
We went to the same school – Sabah Primary School – which is located on Ahmed Al-Jaber Street (formerly known as Dasman), as he used to live in Dasman Palace. Half of the Sheikhs’ children and those living under their care studied in Sabah Primary School because of its proximity to Dasman Palace, and the other half studied in the Eastern School in Al-Mutaba neighborhood.